The Partnership has issued a notice announcing its intention to let a tender for a 25-year contract covering waste collection, recycling and disposal in the county of Shropshire.
Click here for the Shropshire Waste Partnership tender notice in the letsrecycle.com tenders section
The contract is thought to be worth about 305 million but that inflation over the 25-year period could see this doubling. The government is likely to support the deal with about 35 million in Private Finance Initiative credits.
The provisional start date for the contract will be April 1, 2007 and Shropshire hopes to have agreed a contract with a preferred bidder by about October 2006. Under the current timeline Shropshire will be closing the pre-qualification stage early next year.
Frank Mulgrew, the executive officer for the Shropshire Waste Partnership, said: “Once the pre-qualification stage is complete we will invite about four companies to table bids with a view to cutting this number down to one or two preferred bidders by summer 2005.”
Bidders
Shropshire is holding a bidders day on November 12 2004 at the Shirehall in Shrewsbury at which prospective bidders will have a chance to have a one-to-one interview with the council team about the contract.
Mr Mulgrew said: “We have had a number of companies contacting us for information and we expect some of the big players to be involved come January.”
The partnership includes all the local authorities in Shropshire with the exception of Shrewsbury and Atcham, after the county and four districts signed a constitution formally establishing a unitary-style waste authority (see letsrecycle.com story). The Partnership will still be working with Shrewsbury and Atcham, as Shropshire county council continues to have a disposal authority role for the district.
New facilities
Shropshire county council has also announced this week that two new waste management facilities are on schedule to be opened in Shropshire by the end of this year.
The facilities, at Battlefield, Shrewsbury and Whitchurch, North Shropshire are being constructed with the target of recycling 50% of the waste delivered by April of next year. Both facilities are to be operated by waste management company SITA UK.
The Whitchurch site, which has a capacity of 50,000 tonnes, is expected to be operational by mid-November while Battlefield should be open by the end of December. Vic Pitcher, spokesman for Shropshire county council said: “Good progress is being made on both sites and they will be up and running by the end of the year.”
The Battlefield site, a 100,000 capacity facility, contains a household waste recycling centre, a materials recovery facility and a waste transfer station while the Whitchurch site consists of a recycling centre and a transfer station.
The new facilities will replace the existing sites in Shrewsbury and North Shropshire. In 2003/04 Shropshire residents produced approximately 172,000 tonnes of waste. Just over 23% of household waste in Shropshire was either recycled or composted.
- SITA opened a new landfill facility this week at Granville, Shropshire as part of the existing waste management centre at the site. The Granville site is predominantly for recycling but the landfill means they can now deal with all types of waste.
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